Sharp Objects Review: A Slow Burn and Eerie Premiere

Sharp Objects

Episode 1: “Vanish”

Network: HBO

Showrunner: Marti Noxon

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée

Starring: Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, Sophia Lillis

Reviewed by John Gomes

 

Sharp Objects begins with a series of eerie drive-by, panning camera shots of the show’s setting, a fictional small Missouri town, Wind Gap. As we drive by this vintage small town, we are introduced to two young girls, who are trying to sneak into one of their houses, a big old horror movie-esque house, without one of the girl’s mom noticing. While we are meant to believe this a flashback to protagonist, Camille Preaker’s youth; it turns out the whole scene is in fact a dream by the older Camille. Director Jean-Marc Vallée shoots it in such a way that the two Parkers interact with each other with the young Preaker(played by Sophie Lillis) poking her sleeping older self with a paper clip, waking her up. How’s that for creepy.

Self-harm, and having to return home are central themes of Sharp Objects premiere, “Vanish.” From Marti Noxon(co-creator of reality-show satire UnREAL) and Vallée(Big Little Lies), Sharp Objects, adapted from Gillian Flynn’s debut novel, the eight part mini-series centers around Camille, played by Amy Adams, a reporter with the St. Louis Chronicle sent to her hometown of Wind Gap to cover the disappearance and murder of two young girls, despite her reluctance to do so.

The show seems to want to be previous HBO shows, Big Little Lies and True Detective at the same time, with Camille personal issues resembling the former, while the mystery of the two missing girls mirrors the latter. With Vallée behind the camera, the visuals are comparable to Big Little Lies, with plenty of haunting visuals besides the opening scene coming and going in the premiere. Characters walk past an empty chair, only for a shadowed child to be sitting there when they walk past it again. Camille’s dreams/flashbacks are where most of these visuals pop up.

Amy Adams shows from the get-go that she is perfectly capable of portraying the litany of issues plaguing Camille. Chiefly, her propensity to drink vodka and other forms of alcohol at all hours of the day. She goes as far to hide vodka in a water bottle to avoid suspicion. It’s accurate to say that all she drinks in the episode is alcohol. There is something she is trying drown out with the alcohol and we do find out what later in the episode. Other issues are revealed later as the show drifts forward and Adams does an excellent job of exhibiting all of Camille’s mental scars. Sophie Lillis does her best to match Adams as teenage Camille, as we see what Camille’s troubled youth was like.

Among those other issues is Camille’s relationship with her estranged mother, Adora( played by Patricia Clarkson), a helicopter parent who bears down on Camille as soon as she returns to that house from the beginning, chastising her for asking questions about the girls’ disappearance. Clarkson laces the character with enough believability that her extreme parenting doesn’t come across as too evil. While the show takes place in Missouri, Adora and other characters display plenty of southern charm and “sugary passive aggression,” as Camille puts it. Words are like molasses and hang in the air due to resident’s accents. It becomes clear why Camille left Wind Gap for a bigger city.

Joining Adora in the house are Alan, Camille’s docile step dad and Amma, her teenage half-sister. Amma is the creepiest of the bunch, seemingly wanting to copy what Camille did in her youth saying, “We’re alike; I knew we would be,” in the creepiest way possible to Camille.

With Camille investigating mystery of the two girls’ disappearances, the show is surprisingly lean on suspects. While we are introduced to characters like the father of one of the girls who acts strangely and the lonely brother of the other girl, no one we have met so far seemingly has a motive for the macabre crime.

Meanwhile, a love interest for Camille (or so it seems) is introduced in the form of detective Richard(played by Chris Messina), who like Camille comes from a big city and doesn’t get along so nicely with the locals or his police chief as he tries to solve the murders.

Adams, Clarkson, Noxon and Vallée are the standouts of the episode. Noxon does a fantastic job of introducing the various players without giving away too many clues, if any. Some may be bored quickly with how slow the episode paces itself, but it’s clear that Noxon and Vallée want to introduce Camille and Wind Gap first before hitting us with the murder-mystery. And the show rewards viewers’ patience with a couple of momentum inducing reveals at the end that set the stage for the rest of the series.